My doe-eyed Sakuntala presented herself at her husband’s court. Big bellied, trusting, she stood in his throne room – and was rejected. Can’t remember who she is, my son-in-law-to-be blandly stated to his court; not the faintest memory, he said. It was the same old story.
Sakuntala was weeping with rage, tearing at her bark garments, demanding Dushyanta remember her body, she was the focus of a hundred censorious eyes, and helpless; she screamed she’d rather kill the child than give birth to a lie. My Sakuntala was declared mad.
This is when I turned visible. For I, Menaka, am a mother first. It’s common knowledge that there’s a wee loophole in every curse and law, income tax et al. The loophole in mine was that only once in an eternity could I show up in a shadowy form. I, water nymph, summoned the powers of dew, mist and rainbow to coalesce around me and give me shape. Semi-translucent I descended from the skies to vindicate my daughter and carry her away to another forest ashram. I sang comfort to her in my divine tongue; she wept the coarse tears of mortals.
My Sakuntala, she flowered there, she invented herbal dyes with which she painted the ashram walls, she also grew to be a bard of the forests, of its silences and cries and its rustling lights; the first of her compositions she sang to her newborn son, Bharata. He grew up surrounded by solitude and song. No wonder he became Bharata the wise king of this splendid and sad geography.